Oil spill alert: Saw gets stuck in riser pipe, Coast Guard says

View full size(AP Photo/BP PLC)In this image made from video released by British Petroleum (BP PLC), oil can be seen pouring out of the blowout preventer, left, as robot submarines work near it early Wednesday June 2, 2010.

View full size(AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)Memorial crosses symbolizing what is lost due to the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion and oil spill stand in the front yard of a house in Grand Isle, La., Tuesday, June 1, 2010. "This is breaking people," property owner Patrick Shay, not pictured, said of the spill's effect on Grand Isle residents.

PORT FOURCHON, La. -- The risky effort to contain the
nation's worst oil spill hit a snag Wednesday when a diamond-edged saw
became stuck in a thick pipe on a blown-out well at the bottom of the
Gulf of Mexico.

Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen said the goal was to
free the saw and finish the cut later in the day. This is the latest
attempt to contain -- not plug -- the gusher. The best chance at stopping
the leak is a relief well, which is at least two months from completion.

"I
don't think the issue is whether or not we can make the second cut.
It's about how fine we can make it, how smooth we can make it," Allen
said.

If crews make the cut, they will try to place a cap on top
of the oil spewing out. This cut-and-cap effort could temporarily
increase the flow of oil by as much as 20 percent, though Allen said
officials wouldn't know whether that had happened until the cut could
be completed.

Engineers may have to bring in a second saw if the
delay continues, and they are shooting chemical dispersants at the oil
leaking out of the new cut. Allen said once the cut is made, crews will
inspect it and the cap could be placed over the spill as early as
Wednesday.

The effort underwater was going on as oil drifted
close to the Florida Panhandle's white sand beaches for the first time
and investors ran from BP's stock for a second day, reacting to the
company's failure to plug the leak by shooting mud and cement into the
well, known as the top kill.

The Justice Department also has
announced it started criminal and civil probes into the spill, although
the department did not name specific targets for prosecution.

Shares
in British-based BP PLC were down 3 percent Wednesday morning in London
trading after a 13 percent fall the day before. BP has lost $75 billion
in market value since the spill started with an April 20 oil rig
explosion and analysts expect damage claims to total billions more.

In
Florida, officials confirmed an oil sheen Tuesday about nine miles from
Pensacola beach, where the summer tourism season was just getting
started.

Winds were forecast to blow from the south and west, pushing the slick closer to western Panhandle beaches.

Emergency
crews began scouring the beaches for oil and shoring up miles of boom.
County officials will use it to block oil from reaching inland
waterways but plan to leave beaches unprotected because they are too
difficult to protect and easier to clean up.

"It's inevitable
that we will see it on the beaches," said Keith Wilkins, deputy chief
of neighborhood and community services for Escambia County.

The
oil has been spreading in the Gulf since the Deepwater Horizon rig
exploded six weeks ago, killing 11 workers and eventually sinking. The
rig was being operated for BP, the largest oil and gas producer in the
Gulf.

Crude has already been reported along barrier islands in
Alabama and Mississippi, and it has polluted some 125 miles of
Louisiana coastline.

More federal fishing waters were closed,
too, another setback for one of the region's most important industries.
More than one-third of federal waters were off-limits for fishing,
along with hundreds of square miles of state waters.

Fisherman
Hong Le, who came to the U.S. from Vietnam, had rebuilt his home and
business after Hurricane Katrina wiped him out. Now he's facing a
similar situation.

"I'm going to be bankrupt very soon," Le, 53,
said as he attended a meeting for fishermen hoping for help.
"Everything is financed, how can I pay? No fishing, no welding. I weld
on commercial fishing boats and they aren't going out now, so nothing
breaks."

Le, like other of the fishermen, received $5,000 from BP PLC, but it was quickly gone.

"I
call that 'Shut your mouth money,'" said Murray Volk, 46, of Empire,
who's been fishing for nearly 30 years. "That won't pay the insurance
on my boat and house. They say there'll be more later, but do you think
the electric company will wait for that?"

BP may have bigger problems, though.

Attorney
General Eric Holder, who visited the Gulf on Tuesday, would not say who
might be targeted in the probes into the largest oil spill in U.S.
history.

"We will closely examine the actions of those involved
in the spill. If we find evidence of illegal behavior, we will be
extremely forceful in our response," Holder said in New Orleans.

The
federal government also ramped up its response to the spill with
President Barack Obama ordering the co-chairmen of an independent
commission investigating the spill to thoroughly examine the disaster,
"to follow the facts wherever they lead, without fear or favor."

The
president said that if laws are insufficient, they'll be changed. He
said that if government oversight wasn't tough enough, that will
change, too.

BP has tried and failed repeatedly to halt the flow
of the oil, and the latest attempt like others has never been tried
before a mile beneath the ocean. Experts warned it could be even
riskier than the others because slicing open the 20-inch riser could
unleash more oil if there was a kink in the pipe that restricted some
of the flow.

"It is an engineer's nightmare," said Ed Overton, a
Louisiana State University professor of environmental sciences.
"They're trying to fit a 21-inch cap over a 20-inch pipe a mile away.
That's just horrendously hard to do. It's not like you and I standing
on the ground pushing -- they're using little robots to do this."

Engineers
have put underwater robots and equipment in place this week after a
bold attempt to plug the well by force-feeding it heavy mud and cement
-- called a "top kill" -- was aborted over the weekend. Crews pumped
thousands of gallons of the mud into the well but were unable to
overcome the pressure of the oil.

The company said if the small
dome is successful it could capture and siphon a majority of the
gushing oil to the surface. But the cut and cap will not halt the oil
flow, just capture some of it and funnel it to vessels waiting at the
surface.

BP's best chance to permanently plug the leak rests with
a pair of relief wells but those won't likely be completed until August.

(,Associated Press Writers Brian Scoloff and Greg Bluestein authored this report, with contributions from Darlene
Superville and Pete Yost from Washington, Curt Anderson from Miami,
Kevin McGill in Schriever, Mary Foster
in Boothville, and Michael Kunzelman in New Orleans.).